John Irving Research Paper

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“If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it” (Irving 522). John Irving practiced what he preached and lived an extraordinary life. Ever since he was a little boy in his home town in the United States, John focused on bettering himself as a writer and looking for inspiration for his books; he did just that. He grew up in search for the right college, found the inspiration behind most of his writing, and established his own views for the literacy world.
John Irving was born on Exeter, Massachusetts, on March 3, 1942, to F. N. and Francis Winslow Irving. There he fell in love with not only wrestling but also writing. He was able to attend the University of Pittsburgh where he soon found out that wrestling was not for him. He spent all his time constantly writing to better himself. He then left Pittsburgh an attended the University of New Hampshire. In 1963 he traveled to Austria where he enrolled at the University of Vienna. He then married Shyla Leary who was a painter in Austria. After about a year he moved back to the states and attended the University of New …show more content…

John believes in conventional values such as art and the family, than in blaming the status quo or proclaiming the arrival of a new age. He also believes that the compassion and common sense of the old needs to merge with the equal open mindedness of the new. The 158-Pound Marriage and The World According to Garp tells the story of a society that is broken by violence and indifference that a total collapse seems close at hand. Irving has a calm and unbiased style that shifts away from the righteous sermonizing and lets the characters and their experiences to speak for themselves. His characters are not perfect. They have strengths, but they also have weaknesses (Rupersburg

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